Fire

With its slanty eye cocked on China, all Japan trembled with patriotic fervor last week. General elections were coming, the budget was unbalanced, the yen was falling, Government bonds were off. But about such things few subjects of the Emperor cared when Japanese arms were carving out world headlines in Shanghai, Nanking, Harbin. Flags fluttered from every Tokyo home. Troops drilled in every barracks. Full of martial memories, reservists tramped back and forth to business, pretending their umbrellas were guns. Proud Japanese fathers lectured their sons on the honor of dying for Nippon.

Not one paper dared criticize what the Government was doing in China. While the General Staff met to discuss the advisability of sending an army to Shanghai, that inevitable accompaniment of every war, the Atrocity Story, began to burgeon in the Tokyo Press. (A Chinese had eaten a Japanese baby, etc. etc.) The Foreign Office published an official statement insisting that not a shot had been fired until Japanese marines were sniped by Chinese regulars. Meanwhile the Tokyo Asahi quietly announced that thousands of new jobs were open to Japanese in Manchuria and Mongolia. The South Manchuria Railway sent a message to half a dozen Japanese universities last week that it would be prepared to employ hundreds of graduates in China this spring. It asked for lists of recommended students.

Almost a thousand miles from Manchuria, in the sprawling, river-muddied harbor of Shanghai, greatest port in all the Orient, lay Admiral Koichi Shiosawa with eleven warships. One of them was the newest type of marine terror, the aircraft carrier Kaga, nestling 60 airplanes on her vast weird deck, smoke pouring out from her strange horizontal funnel.

The Admiral, in the unmistakable language of an ultimatum, had issued his demands to Shanghai's Mayor Wu. Frantic, the Mayor and the tycoons of the city had agreed to accept them all-not only to make reparation for the tousling of five Japanese monks who had paraded through Shanghai streets beating drums; but also to abolish the anti-Japanese societies which promote the boycott on Japanese goods (TIME, Feb. 1).

But Admiral Shiosawa had received final instructions. Said he: "In our experience Chinese promises are never carried out. That is all."

On Thursday night at 11:15 p. m. he began the systematic occupation of Chapei, the Chinese city stretching north of the rich International Settlement. He had in all about 3,000 troops--some 1,200 marines from his ship, some 2,000 of the Japanese garrison maintained in the Japanese section of the International Settlement. Armored cars with searchlights led the way. Behind them came trucks, jammed with infantry. In reserve were infantry, on foot. Crash! Crash! went the rifles shooting out the street lights as the columns advanced. At every corner trucks stopped. Men hopped out to scurry through the side streets. In the dark twisting alleys no living thing showed but a few frightened dogs, a few yellow-eyed cats. A few airplanes zoomed overhead. One accidentally dropped a bomb in the foreign quarter. . . .

All the days that Japan had been threatening, woeful Mayor Wu and Chinese allies were not idle. China had few planes or tanks or ships to pit against Japan but she had plenty of men. There were over 30,000 of them gathered behind the Chapei district. When Japan reached the North Railway Station the 30.000 struck back, hard.

One Japanese may be the equal of five Chinese soldiers. Before dawn Admiral Shiosawa learned that ten-to-one were more than he could handle. Japanese suffered losses. Another commander might have withdrawn and tried again but not Admiral Shiosawa. Withdrawal would mean a loss of "face"; he would never prove himself as great a commander as his rival in Manchuria, General Honjo. It was up to the Kaga to get him out of his trouble. Forthwith he ordered all of her 60 planes to come, bomb.

Friday morning the roof of every tall building in the International Settlement was black with gaping Chinese and "foreigners" watching the show. Every 20 minutes a Japanese squadron swooped over, dove down on the unprotected roofs of the native cities and dropped a dozen whistling bombs. With each explosion towers of dust and smoke shot 150 ft. into the air. The sky grew dark. It was a wonderful sight. Not for hours did the spectators realize what it meant. Under those roofs were women and children, coolies and their old fathers, being blown to bits. Flames began to leap from a dozen roofs. Chapei was on fire. The spectators in the International Settlement became thoroughly alarmed, retreated from the roofs. Now the flames of the burning native city, across Soochow Creek, filled the sky. Into the International Settlement poured streams of terror-stricken Chinese. Wretched, many wailing piteously, they huddled their children and baskets and stumbled on in the darkness. . . .

Sunday. Chapei still burned. The Chinese garrison had suffered big losses, but was still there. Japan had slaughtered thousands, had landed her troops illegally in the International Settlement, had shelled Texas Oil Co. depot (when a Japanese warship mistook the firecrackers of a Chinese religious ceremony for gun fire), had arrested a U. S. citizen, name of Johnson, suspected of being a sniper; but China still held Shanghai. The Municipal Council attempted to arrange a peace conference in the British Consulate. In the chair sat Shanghai's senior diplomatic agent, able, moon-faced U. S. Consul General Edwin Sheddan Cunningham.* The conference lasted from 10 in the morning through tiffin until long after teatime and achieved nothing. Chinese and Japanese officers shouted at each other across the table because of the noise of Japanese machine guns drilling at Chinese snipers, less than two blocks away. Past the Consulate's locked doors streamed an endless procession of refugees, limping, terrified, wounded. Consul General Cunningham took time off to flash a warning to the world that with this additional population the Settlement faced an acute food shortage.

Tuesday. Nanking, the Nationalist capital, lies 210 miles up the Yangtze. A river patrol of seven Japanese destroyers is stationed there. Without warning, their commander began bombing the city which was simultaneously plunged into darkness except for searchlights which wavered fearfully from the Chinese airport. Enormously strengthened by the arrival of 30,000 fresh troops the day before, the Chinese garrison was nonetheless unprepared for the attack. Earlier in the day, the Mayor said he had been assured that no offensive would be launched. To avoid possible misunderstanding, sandbag barricades, erected at strategic points within the city, had been taken down. Under cover of the bombardment, Japanese blue-jackets landed five miles outside the city and engaged in sporadic hostilities with detachments of the Chinese garrison. Meanwhile, the Drum watchtower, which has warned Nanking citizens of danger since the Ming dynasty, sounded its strident alarm and refugees from Shanghai piled into British steamers, anxious to get back as quickly as they could. Also at Nanking was the U. S. destroyer Simpson. As the first shells screamed over the city the Simpson hustled out of the way. At Shanghai martial law was declared; U. S. Marines put up loft. barbed wire fences across side streets, planted machine guns. Into the harbor came Japan's two other airplane carriers. Into the harbor came also four U. S. destroyers from Manila (see p. 9). Reports of the Nanking bombing, traced to the Japanese consular office, said that it was only a "demonstration" and that the shells fired on the town were blank ammunition.

To the Rescue. From the beginning of the Shanghai incident Britain, who long had an alliance with Japan, and France, who has aspirations of her own for the Chinese province of Yunnan, have been lukewarm in their protests to Tokyo. But the actions of Admiral Shiosawa changed all that. In London King-Emperor George V presided at a special cabinet meeting. Two British cruisers were sent racing to Shanghai from Singapore. Artillery and infantry were ordered up from Hongkong. French troops barricaded their concession against Japan. An Italian destroyer landed 150 marines. Even Portugal did her bit. She owns the little peninsula and famed gambling city of Macao in China. With her boilers wheezing bravely the 36-year-old Portuguese cruiser Adamastor made her way out of Macao. Shanghai bound.

But still the only real rescue was one of diplomacy, not of arms. Day and night U. S. and British diplomats in Tokyo. Nanking, London, Washington struggled to give birth to a formula. Finally they found one which they promptly dispatched for presentation simultaneously to the foreign offices at Tokyo and Nanking but which was obviously intended primarily for the Japanese. The five points of the formula:

1) Immediate discontinuance of all "acts of violence" on the part of both sides. 2) Immediate discontinuance of all mobilization and preparations for war. 3) Immediate recession of combatants of both nations from points in the Shanghai area wherein there were places of mutual contact. 4) The establishment of neutral zones in the International Settlement which would keep the forces separated and thus protect the Settlement. 5) Commencement of negotiations, following acceptance of the first four points, to settle all differences in accordance with the Kellogg Pact; this to be accomplished with the assistance of neutral and impartial observers.

Harbin. While all these things were happening in other places paunchy General Honjo and his troops were still in Manchuria and as busy as usual. Chinese resistance right down to the Great Wall was broken. Last week Japanese forces swung about and moved north toward Harbin. By so doing they threatened another international crisis quite as acute as that at Shanghai. The Chinese Eastern Railway, with headquarters at Harbin, is Soviet-controlled. Many times Soviet troops have been stationed at Harbin as a "police force." But Russia was not ready for war with Japan last week. There were 100,000 Russian citizens but no Soviet troops in Harbin. Its defense was left to a Chinese general. Ting Chao. with a force of 30,000 men. Moscow remained inert, but the prevailing sentiment that the goings-on at Shanghai were the prelude to more entangled international developments was expressed in a headline in the Pravda, semi-official Moscow news organ: "One against another and all against China." Reports filtered through via Berlin of a great massing of Soviet troops in Vladivostok. Two agricultural machinery factories near Moscow have been hastily converted to munitions plants.

Wednesday. While the world waited for the two nations to reply to the five proposals, while British Minister for the Dominions J. H. Thomas was making a rousing speech before an extraordinary session of the League Council at Geneva, the Japanese continued fighting in Shanghai and announced that the Chinese had been heavily repulsed in the Chapei district. And in Tokyo, the Japanese General Staff showed no signs of rescinding its order, made the day before, that a military force be sent to Shanghai to reinforce the marines.

*Large, deep-voiced Edwin Sheddan Cunningham was born in Sevier County, Tenn. 64 years ago Once a mail clerk, he worked in a publishing house for a while, entered the Consular Service in 1898. He has remained in the Far East ever since, is now dean of foreign consuls in Shanghai, known even before the crisis as "the most difficult post in the consular service."

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